LM FI HTOERY EARLY FILM THEORIES IN ITALY IN MEDIA

12 Fr ancesco Casetti(Towards a New Art), published in 1921. Furthermore, the authors are notindividuals whose research deals entirely or even predominantly with cinema; rather, they are journalists, intellectuals, or writers on a wide varietyof subjects, for whom cinema is only one of many interests.2 Again, only atthe end of the 1910s do we see the by-lines of Sebastiano Arturo Luciani,Lucio d’Ambra, and Emanuele Toddi recur. At the same time, there is nota ‘discipline’ as a frame of reference that clearly outlines how and whycinema should be examined; instead, the contributions respond to a rangeof different motivations, from simple curiosity about a recent invention toobservations of the effects that films have upon social life. Finally, suchdiscursive production seldom calls itself theory; when it does, it is withreticence. This is the case with Luciani, who, in a text written in 1919, ‘Loscenario cinematografico’ (‘The Cinematographic Script’), although heassigns theoretical status to his ruminations, acknowledges that they canraise suspicion, and tries to dissolve the distrust by practically applying hisideas.3 The word theory would become relatively common only in the firsthalf of the 1920s, especially in France, Germany, and the US, as a frameworkin the broader attempt to define how cinema works at different levels. 4Nonetheless, if it is true that early ‘theories’ (in quotation marks) arenot the same as classical theory (without quotation marks), it is also truethat they respond to a need that classical theory would continue to takeinto account, even when its overt goal was to describe the basic laws of themedium. They share the need to provide an image of cinema that facilitatesits social comprehension and acceptance. Indeed, the main concern of early‘theories’ is precisely to offer a definition of a phenomenon that, at firstsight, seems puzzling and even scandalous. How can one grasp an apparatusthat seems to capture the fleeting moment and ensure the permanenceof life? How can one justify a machine with a gaze that goes beyond human capacities? How can one adapt to something that glorifies ubiquity,simultaneity, speed, and details? And how can the enormous success ofcinema be explained? The early ‘theories’, despite their sporadic character,quasi-anonymous writers, lack of a clear ‘method’, and hesitation towardself-designation, respond to the need for a practical and shared definitionof a phenomenon that challenges our expectations and our habits. In thissense, early ‘film theories’ do not have the character of scientific theory;rather, they are similar to those personal accounts that we formulate tomake sense of our daily actions. Described by ethnomethodology as a keycomponent of our social lives,5 accounts epitomize the ways membersof a community signify, describe, or explain the properties of a specificsocial situation in order to clarify and share its meaning. Likewise, early

The Throb of the Cinematogr aph 13theories seek to make what at first might appear ambiguous and strangeinto something comprehensible and graspable: they show what cinema isand how we encounter it; what distinguishes it and how we can react to it;what it can offer us and why we must accept it. The result of all of this is a‘public image’ of cinema that functions as both definition and legitimation.6The status of early film ‘theory’ as an account—or even as a gloss—explains why it so often appears in disguise, as if it were something ‘other’than a theory. Indeed, even if we limit ourselves to texts included in thisanthology, ‘theories’ appear in the form of editorials, such as the ones signedby Giovanni Papini, Adolfo Orvieto, and Enrico Thovez in the dailies LaStampa (The Press) and Corriere della Sera (Evening Courier); or of culturalreports, such as Ricciotto Canudo’s ‘Trionfo del cinematografo’ (‘Triumphof the Cinematograph’); or as political interventions such as those byVittorio Emanuele Orlando and Antonio Gramsci; or as letters written tonewspapers, such as the one by Giovan Battista Avellone, former GeneralProsecutor at the Appeals Court in Rome; or as pedagogical essays, such asDomenico Orano’s ‘Il cinematografo e l’educazione’ (‘The Motion Picturesand Education’); or as scientific reports, such as those by experimentalpsychologist Mario Ponzo; or as clinical observations, such as those by theneurologist Giovanni d’Abundo; or finally as fiction, written by authors suchas Guido Gozzano, Federigo Tozzi, and Aldo Borelli. And the variety of thetexts is even wider still: ‘theory’ can surface in reviews, in interviews, andeven in self-portraits written by professionals. There are also full-blownessays dedicated to cinema, especially near the end of the 1910s, by authorslike Sebastiano Arturo Luciani and Goffredo Bellonci (included in thisanthology), but this form would become dominant only midway through the1920s. In the first two decades of the century, ‘theory’ is distributed acrossall the fields and divisions of social discourse: only this sort of presenceallows for the true ‘accountability’ of cinema.To this diversity of formats corresponds a variety of themes, not one ofwhich is exclusive to a single discursive typology. Just to mention a few:cinema produces new forms of perception and reflection, as stressed bythe fiction writer Pio Vanzi and the psychologist Mario Ponzo. It has aspecial ability to reflect new lifestyles that reconfigure both the structureof social relationships and the notion of subjectivity, as underscored by thephilosopher Giovanni Papini and the neurologist Giuseppe d’Abundo. Itopens up new aesthetic horizons, in which the value of art works dependsnot only on their intrinsic quality, but on their relationship to consumption, as highlighted by the art critic Enrico Thovez and the philosopherand pedagogue Francesco Orestano. It marks the advent of the new urban

14 Fr ancesco Casettimasses as modern nations’ social and historical protagonists, as stressed bycolumnist Angiolo Orvieto and commentator Giovanni Fossi. It generatessocial risks, but also offers great possibilities for the advancement of themasses, as suggested by Vittorio Emanuele Orlando (in a serious way) andEmilio Scaglione (in an ironic one). ‘Theories’ tried to parse the noveltyof cinema both as a whole and in its more localized aspects through anextensive circulation of questions and remarks.Attempts to define what cinema is often merge with an effort to detectwhat it will be, or can be, or must be. Hence the wide variety of perspectivesfrom which cinema is approached: ‘theories’ address not only cinema’sactuality, but also its possibilities, even its purported obligations. Thisis true in the obvious case of ‘La cinematografia futurista’ (‘The FuturistCinematography’), a manifesto by the most relevant Italian avant-gardemovement, which heralds a cinema that will never find its full realization (Marinetti and others 1916); but also of ‘Orizzonti del cinema avvenire’(‘Horizons of Cinema to Come’), in which Giuseppe Fossa describes a cinemaof the future that is amazingly akin to television or even Skype.7 ‘Theory’was often a ‘promise’ if not a ‘dream’ of cinema.8Given the wide variety of formats, topics, and stances, no single textmanaged to dictate the terms of the debate. There are no key contributionsfunctioning as paradigmatic or universal points of reference, as would bethe case in the late 1920s with Sebastiano Arturo Luciani’s L’antiteatro (TheAnti-Theatre) or in the early 1930s with Alberto Consiglio’s Cinema. Arte elinguaggio (Cinema: Art and Language).9 Undoubtedly, certain texts gainedwidespread attention and resonance, and were paraphrased in subsequentcontributions (often without proper acknowledgment, as occurred withRicciotto Canudo’s essay ‘Triumph of the Cinematograph’, published inlate December 1908 in the Florentine newspaper Il Nuovo Giornale (TheNew Daily) and then republished, almost verbatim but under a pseudonym,in La rivista fono-cinematografica (Phono-cinematographic Magazine) inJanuary and February 1909.10 We do not, however, find a ‘canon’ in the propersense of the word. Instead, we find a kind of muddled, crowded discourse,where different contributions emerge, side by side, even overlapping, in anapparently confused but effective dialogue with each other. For instance,within the timeframe of a few months, Giovanni Papini celebrated cinema’s popularity in a widespread daily, while Gualtiero Ildebrando Fabbridescribed and fictionalized film audiences in a book produced as a giftfor the most assiduous spectators of a cinema in Milan. At the same time,Angiolo Orvieto reported in the daily Corriere della Sera on the differencesbetween cinema and theatre, while in the competing daily, La Stampa,

The Throb of the Cinematogr aph 15Enrico Thovez commented on cinema’s affinity with contemporary life;Ricciotto Canudo, in correspondence from Paris, highlighted cinema’sdistinct aesthetic traits, while Mario Ponzo, in a scientific report, focusedon the physiology of film reception. This amounts to an impressive circuitof discussion, without a clear and singular centre; Michel Foucault wouldcall it a ‘discursive formation.’11 It is within this circuit that the image ofcinema takes shape: an image whose contours are continually sharpenedand which becomes the public portrait of the new invention.Beginning midway through the 1920s in Italy and in many other countries, the theory of cinema would begin to arrange and order this ratherchaotic circuit of discourses. More precise methodologies would emerge,key themes would become more widely shared, and the sketch of a canonwould take shape. The need to define cinema in a practical way, however,would continue, albeit in connection with more specific contexts. What isthe cinema as an art? As a national industry? As a language? Even withina more clearly-developed framework, the need for an ‘account’ would notcompletely disappear. This need fully re-emerged in recent years, at whichpoint the convergence between different media obligated cinema to radically transform itself

Film Theory in Media History Film Theory in Media History explores the epistemological and theoretical foundations of the study of film through texts by classical authors as well as anthologies and